Your flat is fine. Let's make it yours. Interior design for people who live between two places.
ZEIA is a small Romanian-Swiss architecture studio, run by the two of us. We design interiors in English, around the way you actually live, for people who have made a home somewhere that is not where they are from.
A flat can be perfectly fine and still feel like nobody's. The furniture is fine. The layout works. It just does not feel like yours, and you cannot quite say why. Usually it is because nothing in it came from your life. It came from a shop, or from whoever lived there before.
We think a home is made with the people who live in it, not handed to them finished. So we listen for the things that make a place yours: the rug you carried across a border, the corner your daughter wants just so, the light you miss from somewhere else. Then we design around them. We also know what a German building will and will not allow, and we say so early, before it costs you anything.
A flat we finished
An attic floor, kept open under the slope of the roof instead of carved into small rooms. White walls, pale oak underfoot, and the original timber posts left where you can see them carrying the roof.
The kitchen runs along one wall as a single quiet line, so the place stays a room and not a showroom of appliances. The island faces the windows. Everything that can be put away is put away.
The point of all of it is the light and the view. Sit on the sofa and the town is right there in the glass. We kept the palette calm on purpose, so the window does the talking.
What we bring to a home
We design around how you actually live and the things you carried with you, so the result could not belong to anyone else.
We work in your language and talk to your trades directly. Nothing is lost in translation, and the building rules do not take you by surprise.
Your odd, specific wants are the brief, not an inconvenience. We never impose a look, and nothing is decided over your head.
We show you the cost behind each choice, and nothing changes without you. Surprises come from decisions made without you, and we do not work that way.
How a project goes
Thirty minutes, in English, online or at your flat. You tell us what the place is and what it is missing. No pitch.
We come and see the flat, watch how the light moves through the day, look at what you already own and love. We write a short brief together first.
Concept first, then the details: materials, light, the built-in pieces. You see and decide everything. We flag anything the building will not allow before it becomes a problem.
We coordinate the trades, in your language, to the finished room. Then we stay reachable for the snags.
Thirty minutes in English, no pitch, to hear what you want this home to feel like. If we are not the right studio for it, we will say so, and point you to someone who is.
A few honest questions
Do you work in English?
Yes. Every conversation, drawing, and decision in English, from the first call to the last detail. It is how the two of us work anyway.
Do we need to own the flat?
For a full interior renovation, yes, or your landlord's written go-ahead. For lighter work it depends on what you want to change. We will be honest early about what is realistic either way.
Will it actually feel like ours, or like a showroom?
That is the whole point. We design around your life and the things you brought with you, not a look from a magazine. If it could belong to anyone, we have not finished.
Do you understand German building rules and trades?
Yes. We know what a German flat will allow, and we speak with your trades directly. When a job needs a German architect's sign-off, we bring in a local partner we trust and tell you so up front.
How do we keep the budget in hand?
We show you the cost behind each choice, and no change happens without you. Surprises on the bill come from decisions made without you, and we do not work that way.
Where do you work?
Berlin and Leipzig mostly, and elsewhere in Germany when the project is right. Half of the studio lives between countries too, so travelling to you is not a problem.